Month: February 2014

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go Finally! More streams are running! We are in the midst of another series of storms bringing rain to much of parched California.

writing a dissertation for dummies I have been patiently waiting for this particular creek to start running, as it is very special. The creek is dry much of the year, but flows once we start getting winter rains. Since moving to my home of 30 years in the Evergreen area of San Jose, I have driven by this spot near my house thousands of times (by calculations, easily over 9 thousand times). Each time I tell myself it would make a great little paintingâ€¦but never painted it. I was too busy painting the Sierras, Lake Tahoe, Big Sur, Yosemite, and other ‘scenic places’ to sell in the art galleries who represent me.

in global It’s Thompson Creek, and about half a mile from painting number One: It Begins. I painted it between two major storms hitting San Jose. The skies were gorgeous and again, besides painting the creek, wanted to include the stormy skies.

A panorama of the scene. The Chinese passerby’s were well versed on iPhone capabilities!

My easel by a dry creek!

The intersection of Capitol Expressway and Quimby Rd right behind me. It was quite noisy painting!

follow url You might notice some pictures have water running, and some don’t. Thompson Creek was a raging torrent for a few days, then the day I went out to paint, was dry again. I had to use my recollections from the day before to paint the water. While I was painting, a maintenance crew was walking the creek checking for what I don’t know. My guess is there is some flow control upstream, but not sure where.

In 1769 Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola hiked over a small range of coastal mountains, saw a beautiful bay, and camped under a giant redwood tree on the banks of a creek in order to explore the area further. He called the tall redwood tree El Palo Alto, which means ‘tall stick’ in Spanish. The land is now called California, the mountains are now called the Santa Cruz Range, the bay is San Francisco Bay, and the creek named San Francisquito Creek. Years later a town would spring up in the area named after the landmark tree, Palo Alto, and a famous university called Stanford started. You can read more about Palo Alto history here.
El Palo Alto in 1875. Note how much of a landmark it was in the old days.

sample personal essay for university applicationPalo Alto could be called the birthplace of Silicon Valley. Growing up together with bordering Stanford University, the town of about 64,000 residents has fueled the high-tech industry with it’s garage startups galore. Many books have been written about all the startups and other high-tech companies in the area, so won’t go into that here.

Here is the trestle viewed from El Camino Real. The tall tree in the middle is “El Palo Alto”.

This plaque placed in 1926 is cemented to a rock in front of the historic redwood tree.

The trestle from the opposite side I painted from.

My easel set under “El Palo Alto” historic redwood tree.

http://thehealingalliance.com/essay/essay-my-hobby-100-words.html As mentioned, I did the painting right under the historic “Palo Alto” redwood tree. Click this link for a map of all painting locations. A plaque from 1926 is there commemorating the historic place. A train trestle was built within feet of the tree and Caltrain rumbles up and down the peninsula carrying passengers to and fro. I wanted to try to capture the tree, trestle, and creek in one small horizontal painting, no small task, especially considering the creek is in a ravine about twenty feet below. I finally settled on a partial composite view of all three with just glimpses of each element.

go to link I did the painting last Monday afternoon after Twentyone: Baylands Fun, but felt this deserved a separate blog post. I also wanted to touch the trestle up a bit under different light and after drying a bit. Prior to this quest, I don’t think I have ever painted a train trestle, and so far there are three in the collection!

enter site Once again, the Los Gatos group was out painting a place on my “to-do-list”, so I joined them again! We painted close to the Lucy Evans Nature Center. There was a good painting everywhere you turned. One friend in the Los Gatos group asked if this qualifies as a Creek or River in Silicon Valley. Most assuredly yes, I replied. The water is the estuaries formed by the San Fransiquito and Matadero Creeks as they empty into the bay.

http://www.wallowaresources.org/article.php?student=ms-thesis The distant shore is the East Bay Foothills above the Newark/Fremont area, and to the left going out of frame would be the Dumbarton Bridge. On the right distant shoreline, I indicated a few of the huge salt piles (which were really there). My guess is these are over 50 feet high. San Francisco Bay is the water just in front of the distant shore.

enter Although the railroad tracks are long gone, it has stood the test of time until recently when the San Jose city council voted to tear it down and put in a new steel trail bridge for the Lost Gatos trail system. Citizens rose up and are demanding the trestle be kept and restored. mba model question papers I agree. The 90 year old trestle is solid, and the Friends of the Willow Glen Trust have now sued the city to stop it’s destruction. You can find some local reports and opinions here, and here. They also have some Facebook pages here, and here. There is a charity event coming up on February 22.

source link For the last year or so I have wanted to paint the trestle, and figured I better do it now if it is torn down. So here is number twenty in my Creeks and Rivers of Silicon Valley. I visited the site about a year ago, and along the creek, it was pretty junky, with a few homeless encampments nearby. This is only a few miles from “The Jungle”, the largest homeless camp in the US. I’ll save commentary on that for another day. Today, most of the junk was gone right around the trestle I think from volunteers cleaning the area up.

essay titles about moms A few pictures. You can now click on a thumbnail, then scroll directly from picture to pictureâ€”

The trestle.

I just thought this would make a cool painting. Under the right branch, you can make out a homeless camp.

http://thehealingalliance.com/essay/writing-prompts-for-high-school-chemistry.html For better effect, I took out about half of the pylons, otherwise it would have looked like a jumbled mess. This is the only painting I did not complete entirely on site. With some of the noise coming from the homeless camps, I felt a little unsafe being there all alone, so finished about half of it in the studio. My heart goes out to the truly homeless, but many are drug addicts or other problems, and the camps can be dangerous places.

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New Almaden Smelter 1863

The native Ohlone Indians called it cinnabar. The early pioneers called it quicksilver. Today we call it mercury, the liquid metal. The southern part of Silicon Valley was once home of the most productive mercury mine in the US. Mercury was produced at the New Almaden mines from 1845 until 1976. It is used to extract gold from ore and was in great demand during the California gold rush years.

The names cinnabar, quicksilver, and mercury are seen everywhere and the local San Jose newspaper is still called The Mercury News.

The Los Gatos group was out again painting along Alamitos Creek in the general area I painted Fifteen: The Hard Drive Machine. Alamitos Creek flows right through New Almaden. The last five days we have been experiencing a Pineapple Express, a moisture drenched series of storms originating around Hawaii in the Pacific, so I expected the creek to be flowing quit readily, but, it was basically dry! Since this is the first real rain all season, it takes some time for the parched earth to saturate enough for the streams to flow and the reservoirs to start filling.

Here are a few photos of the morning’s work. You can now click on a thumbnail, then scroll directly from picture to pictureâ€”

An egret was enjoying the cloudy weather.

Some of the Los Gatos painters enjoying the outdoors.

My easel under the Almaden Expressway overpass.

Here is the painting. I edited out quite a few of the trees and brush as I wanted a clearer view of the skies.

Mercury Sheen I, 8×10, oil on board

I planned on staying in the area the afternoon for another painting, so after wolfing down a sandwich, I drove around the New Almaden area, and finally decided to join a ‘holdout’ from the mornings paintout, Teresa, who was painting the Almaden Valley at the corner of Harry Road and Camden Ave. I wanted to do more of a sky scene to document we finally got some rain! A picture from the afternoon painting session–

Painting Almaden Valley along Harry Road.

This is the first painting where the creek is not the main focus as I wanted to mark the first big storm of the season. New Almaden is in the distant hills and to the lower left is Arroyo Calero Creek.